'Big-spending Queensland billionaire Clive Palmer bought a football team, helped create a political party, added robot dinosaurs to a luxury golf resort and is set to recreate the ‘Titanic’. But are these just fanciful splurges or something more calculated? The reality is that Palmer uses his immense mining wealth (which some estimates put at over $6 billion) in a proactive (if sometimes eccentric) global way. His personal story is just as colourful and intriguing: Clive spent time as a child in China and writes poetry. He is well-known for attention-grabbing statements that send the media into a spin. Shortly after Clive was named a National Living Treasure, he claimed that the CIA was secretly backing green groups in a bid to kill the Australian coal-mining industry. In true Clive fashion, in May 2012 he announced that he was building a luxury cruise liner - the ‘Titanic II’ - and his political feuds are legendary. Part business book, part political insider profile and all rollicking tale, journalist Sean Parnell reveals the man behind the billions. ' (Publisher's blurb)
Dedication:
For Jude, Luca and Rachael – you lead my morning headlines, dominate my live blog, overwhelm my evening update and bring colour and movement to my long reads. I love you.
Epigraph:
Have the strength to know what you are; and what you
want and work towards it with love in your heart, but
don't sell your soul for it because you just might find that
you can't buy it back.
–F. Clive Palmer, little-known Australian poet, 1981
'The life stories of four mining magnates illuminate where Australia’s economy is headed, writes Michael Gilding. The political and social effects could be profound'
'The life stories of four mining magnates illuminate where Australia’s economy is headed, writes Michael Gilding. The political and social effects could be profound'
